On March 30th, President Obama signed the final piece of healthcare reform legislation concluding an epic battle that ultimately lead to the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The bill enforces the largest change to US healthcare for decades and has provided an opportunity for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) advocates to be federally endorsed in our future healthcare system. This entry is an attempt to present excerpts from the PPACA itself that could lay the groundwork for incorporating CAM into the future healthcare system.

CAM proponents tout a few sections in the PPACA as a victory for their cause. One of these sections is 3502, entitled Establishing Community Health Teams To Support The Patient-Centered Medical Home, which endorses government grants “to establish community health teams,” which are defined as “community-based interdisciplinary, interprofessional teams.” It goes on to say that such a ‘team’ may include, “doctors of chiropractic, [and] licensed complementary and alternative medicine practitioners.”1

The requirements of such a health team are listed and one of them reads, “to provide support necessary for local primary care providers… [and] to provide coordination of the appropriate use of complementary and alternative (CAM) services to those who request such services.” What this entails, is that there will be an influx of federal spending into CAM services with the enactment of the new bill.